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The VaultThe Vault is a British music television channel. They generally play songs which are between 1 and 5 years old. The station identity involves using the bumpers during advertising to show music trivia questions.
EkranoplanAn ekranoplan (, literally "screen plane") is a vehicle resembling an aircraft, but operating solely on the principle of ground effect. This effect can be felt when landing in a commercial airliner; just before touchdown, the rate of descent can be felt to decrease. Ground effect vehicles (GEV) fly just above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle.
GEV
During the Cold War, ekranoplans were sighted for years on the Caspian Sea as huge, fast-moving objects. The name Caspian Sea Monster was given by confused U.S. intelligence operatives who were puzzled by the huge vehicle, which looked like an airplane with the outer halves of the wings removed. After the end of the Cold War, the "monster" was revealed to be one of several Russian military designs meant to fly only a few meters above water, saving energy and staying below enemy radar.
The KM, as one model was known in the top secret Soviet military development program, was over 100 m long, weighed 540 tonnes fully loaded, and could travel over 400 km/h, mere meters above the surface of the water. Once moving at speed, the ekranoplan was no longer in contact with the water, and could move over ice, snow, or level land with equal ease.
The important design principle is that the wing lift reduces the further above the surface (land or sea) the ekranoplan "flies" (see ground effect). Thus it is dynamically stable in the vertical dimension.
These craft were originally developed by the Soviet Union as very high-speed (several hundred km/hour) military transports, and were mostly based on the shores of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The largest could transport over 100 tonnes of cargo.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, commercial development has occurred mostly in the United States.
External links
- [http://www.se-technology.com/wig/ WIG boats] - application of Wing-In-Ground effect
- [http://aquaglide.ru/history_e.htm] - A short overview of Soviet ekranoplan creation and development
- [http://www.att-nn.com/ENGL/85yaers.htm] - Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeev. An outstanding designer of highspeed ships
- [http://autospeed.drive.com.au/cms/article.html?&A=1306&P=1] - Between Wind and Waves: Ekranoplans.
- [http://www.ekranoplan.org] - A collection of comics and music, produced by the Australian ekranoplan movement (temporary site)
Category:Ekranoplans
Category:Aircraft configurations
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